Friday, July 11, 2008

Theme for the week -

So apparently this week is all about procrastination and working through not wanting to work.
Something all three drunk writers seem to be fighting this week.
And the more books I write, the worse it gets. I’m occasionally paralyzed by the idea of writing the book the way it should be written, not the way I would write it. I agonize over whether my scenes are doing what they should be doing.
Gone are the days of carefree first drafts, because in my process right now, crazy as my process is, it’s really, really hard for me to re-imagine a book once I’ve written it.
So I know to take more time with set-up and plotting in the beginning.
Basically, writing has just gotten harder, even though I know I’ve gotten better and even though I know I’m far more capable of recognizing and fixing my mistakes.
And too often lately I’ve sat and thought about writing more than I have actually sat and written. My current WIP is going at a snail’s pace. And I wish I could rekindle the excitement and enthusiasm of my earlier days while keeping the knowledge I’ve gained.

But then I read a great book and my imagination gets fired up, and I start to think about my own book and all of a sudden my enthusiasm returns. Or I watch a great movie, or a TV show and I figure out a way to fix a plot complication.

Because in the end I really do still love it.

But I’m in the same boat as Maureen. What would really give me inspiration right now is to sell a bloody book.

6 comments:

Maureen McGowan said...

I think the excitement I miss is the "this will be the one" excitement I felt when I finished previous books. Was that excitement naive? Perhaps. But I think for both of us, we have at least a couple of books that could have been "the one" Now, even though our work is better, it's so much harder to get hopes up...

But, as they say, persistence is key. Just not sure when persistence turns into stubbornness or dead horse flogging... Alas, that is the question...

Abby said...

Sinead, you are right inside my head!

My current WIP is really, really slow, and that's because I wrote the first chapter four times. Had to do it, because I didn't have a handle on the characters and the conflict yet, but still. All that writing for one chapter!

I used to just sit down and say, "I am a genius." and write page after page.

Funny, what happens when we realize we aren't geniuses in the grand scheme of things :)

Anonymous said...

Persistance, or stubbornes, that is the question and my answer varies by the hour.
Abby, I just read the prologue to my current WIP, having written it twice now and it still sucks..
Beginnings are just plain hard to write...
And then sometimes I have Molly's voice inside my head telling me to just write the crap out of a scene.
So hard to do..
But if it feels easy, we're not doing it right, so perhaps it's just meant to be hard,

Amy Ruttan said...

Sinead, I am at the same place.

I cannot, and I mean CANNOT get through this one I'm writing. I don't know what it is, but it's driving me squirrely.

Maybe I'm just tapped from my EDJ ending or all the weddings that seem to be plaguing me this month. I don't know.

Writing does get harder, and the hopes get dimmer.

As Dory says in Finding Nemo "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming."

See that's pretty bad when half of your morale boosting quotes come from Disney Movies. I know your in the same boat too! ;)

Anonymous said...

Wow, disney, it seems to be all I'm watching these days, what with the wee ones dictating my life.
But that is a great motto, Amy, just keep swimming.
Love it.

And you know, every once in a while I write a scene and I feel really good about it and I get a wierd satisfaction that I get with nothing else.

Amy Ruttan said...

I thinks that why we do it Sinead. :)

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